The Haggler: Running in Circles for a Dell Refund - the Haggler

It’s a question raised whenever the Haggler reads a complaint about Dell, where excellent service — in the tale that follows and the many others you can read about online — seems as rare as steak tartare.

Q. I am a small-business owner who has bought dozens of Dell computers over more than eight years. We returned a poorly functioning laptop to Dell in March and have still not received a credit for it, despite its authorizing the return and a dozen frustrating interactions over the last few months. At this point, it does not even respond to our inquiries. Can you give it a shot? Adam Golden

New Providence, N.J.

A. Mr. Golden sent the Haggler some of his e-mail traffic with Dell, and it is grim reading. Keep in mind that he’s just trying to get a refund, with the minor wrinkle that the company credit card he used to buy the laptop has expired. He could still get a refund on that old card, as it happens, or Dell could have sent him a check. But that would be too easy.

In May, after Mr. Golden asked Dell for any news of progress, he read this from a representative named Heather Davis, the same person he had been corresponding with for months:

“Thank you for calling this to my attention. I am looking into this matter for you presently. Do you have your customer number or phone number to help me track this down?”

Come on. Are we really at the “what’s your customer number?” phase so late in the game? It’s like being on a fourth date and hearing “You’re Bob, right?” over dessert. And this is a customer with a long history of buying Dells. How hard could it have been to get the details she requested?

Once Mr. Golden sent the data, Ms. Davis replied:

“Thanks, Adam. I found it. I am processing what is called a CF025 to get you credited. I will drag any customer care rep who responds to this. I apologize for the delay. Everything was set up correctly but apparently did not process right when the computer returned. Please keep in contact. Because your case is not in my caseload tracker I need your correspondence to keep this at the front of my list.”

If you want to encapsulate what’s wrong with Dell’s customer service in a few sentences, you can’t do much better than this. Ms. Davis needs to “drag” a customer care rep into this? Are these people that hard to track down? Are they busy with hobbies?

And the reference to “any customer care rep” suggests a certain level of disorder. It reminds the Haggler of a restaurant where he once worked, where the kitchen was so chaotic you had to personally beg one of the cooks to prepare each order.

Then there’s the dispiriting “keep in touch,” as though Mr. Golden needs to stay on top of this process or it will either stop or go haywire. All because his case is not in Ms. Davis’s “caseload tracker.” Huh? Why isn’t Mr. Golden’s case already in her caseload tracker? And would moving it there be so hard?

It goes on, but let us segue into the remedy phase of his minor — though far too typical — fiasco.

After an e-mail from the Haggler, a representative from Dell wrote to Mr. Golden to say that his case had been handed to some sort of elite team of service ninjas. Fine. As for an explanation of Dell’s woeful performance, a spokeswoman named Jennifer Davis wrote: “This was an unfortunate case of a representative not following up. We have shared this case as a ‘training opportunity’ with her manager. We also share with the appropriate management teams any process failures we may believe exist.”

The Haggler wrote back and pointed out the obvious: this is a very lame response. What Dell is doing here is  implying that somewhere along the way, an employee messed up, and that once the employee is trained properly, all will be ducky. It’s encouraging that “process failures” will be shared with “appropriate management teams,” but this statement doesn’t have the tenor of a company that is ready to embrace a failure and to learn from it.

It’s hardly clear that Dell understands how much consumer antipathy it has generated in recent years. Nor is there any evidence that Dell appreciates all the service madness that can be read between the lines of its customer service e-mail.

The Haggler doesn’t blame Heather Davis. She seems to be trying. But she’s stuck in a lousy system and managed by a company that has little clue about how to treat a customer.

How clueless is Dell? This clueless: Mr. Golden reports that a few days after the company was contacted by the Haggler, he received a voice mail message from a Dell representative, reporting that a refund was in the works. “I was hoping to speak to you,” the person said on the message, “so I could hear the joy in your voice.”

Ponder that one, dear reader. After months of e-mails and calls, after hours of wholly unnecessary typing and talking, Mr. Golden is finally getting what should have been given to him — and nothing more — long ago, and without all the irritations. And Dell is expecting joy.

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.